Collar and Barbie Doll Observed Term Paper

" The poem used heart wrenching language to describe one young girl's constant attempts at and eventual frustration towards living up to society's ideals. This can be seen when after being "advised to play coy... exercise, diet, smile and wheedle" the girl's "good nature wore out like a fan belt."

Towards the end of Herbert's poem the speaker experiences a revelation, which occurs when the speaker feels that God has spoken to him. Once he realizes that God loves him enough to consider him as His "child" then the speaker no longer feels any resentment towards his Master.He thus becomes more morally conscious of continuing to fulfill his Christian duties. Piercy's poem ends with the girl's eventual suicide and funeral, which leads to the story's sad irony that even though the girl hoped to escape society's ideals regarding womanhood through death, it is only after she died that society came to view her as its ideal woman. Thus no sense of social justice was accomplished through the girl's death because no one realized that society's ideals and expectations towards women were….....